There were a lot of anxious people on Sunday, March 16, right before the NCAA Men’s Basketball Selection Committee announced which teams would be included in the NCAA Tournament this year – but none were more anxious or worried than the players for, and fans of, the North Carolina Tar Heel basketball team.

The common wisdom before a game against Duke last week was that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill team would have to beat the Blue Devils in the ACC Tournament in Charlotte in order to make it into the field of contenders, and, as everyone knows by now, UNC lost that game in the final seconds in one of the most bizarre ways anyone has ever lost a basketball game.

What would have been a tying free throw to even the score and likely send the game into overtime was waived off because UNC player Jae’Lyn Withers committed a lane violation with 4 seconds left in the game.

After that loss, and after what else happened in other games around the country, almost no one thought the Tarheels would get the nod from the committee. The Heels only had one win against a “Quad One” opponent – basically, a team ranked in the top 30, and they also had a very bad loss to a “Quad Three” team, one ranked very low. That game was a loss to Stanford in Chapel Hill.

 Several other teams seemed to be much more deserving than the Tar Heels based on a host of metrics.

Yet the committee chose UNC as the last team in the field over what many say were much more worthy teams from other conferences.

On Sunday evening, the selection committee revealed that the Tar Heels were an 11 seed in the South region – the last at-large team to make the field.

That was shocking to many fans across the nation – even many Carolina fans –and it caused a lot of people to question whether the fact that the NCAA tournament selection committee was chaired by North Carolina Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham had anything to do with the decision.

On Monday, March 17, West Virginia’s governor Patrick Morrisey even jumped into the fray by calling the decision a “miscarriage of justice and robbery at the highest levels” in an impassioned public statement. He pointed to the financial incentives in Cunningham’s contract, and the governor implied that Cunningham helped UNC win the last spot in the men’s basketball NCAA Tournament rather than West Virginia.

Cunningham, as the chairman of the NCAA Tournament selection committee this year, had a great deal of influence on which teams made it into the 68-team field. North Carolina was the final team in, while West Virginia was the first team out.

“Cunningham is the athletic director for UNC,” the governor stated. “He also happens to be the head of the tournament selection committee. It’s being reported by a number of outlets that Cunningham had a significant bonus incentive at least $70,000 to get into the tournament, arguably more if they advanced with more incentives … and I want folks to let that sink in for just a minute.”

The West Virginia Mountaineers’ omission was shocking, as nearly every bracket prediction service had that team as one that would be selected.

 Cunningham said on a Sunday evening television interview that all of the policies and procedures to avoid a conflict of interest had been followed.

For one thing, Cunningham said, when there were discussions about the North Carolina Tar Heels, he left the room and wasn’t part of those discussions.

That’s all well and good; however, there are other ways to exert influence rather than simply being in on the discussion about a team in the group meeting.

The same thing happens with, for instance, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners when a commissioner has a conflict of interest. In 2022, when the board voted to give $2 million in county taxpayer money to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Skip Alston, the founder of the museum, walked out of the room and didn’t get a vote. However, he knew very well at that point that he had the votes for the $2 million.  While Alston wasn’t in on the public discussion, one can be assured that he had many one-on-one or one-on-two discussions with other commissioners regarding the matter well before it went to a vote in March of 2022.

That’s not to say that’s what happened in the case of Cunningham and the Tar Heels; however, the way it washed out, with Cunningham leading the committee, raised a whole lot of eyebrows in the basketball world around the country.

Putting aside the bonus money Cunningham receives if UNC makes it into the NCAA Tournament and advances, there’s the question – that still remains unanswered – as to why in the world UNC was picked over several other teams that, at least on paper, looked much more deserving.

Even many die-hard Carolina fans expressed shock at the selection. The Tar Heel Illustrated YouTube show and podcast hosts admitted they were very surprised.  One host said he believed the Tar Heels would have had to outright win the ACC Tournament because it would have to do more than other teams precisely because Cunningham was the head and the committee.  He though the committee would have to bend over backwards to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Thus, he thought, it would be it harder for UNC to get in because Cunningham was the chair of the selection committee.

Another show host stated: “I’ve had conversations with Bubba Cunningham and been in groups where Bubba’s talked about it a lot over the last couple of years about the over reliance on net and quad stuff – and he didn’t think it was a great system, and doesn’t think it’s a great system.  Perhaps there was influence because he is head of the committee that they look at other factors a little stronger than they have before.  It’s like a jury, you know. A jury of your peers may convict the same guy in the same case, while another jury may not convict him. That’s part of the human element in this whole process.”

Regardless of the controversy, Carolina will indeed play in the big dance on  Tuesday. March 18 on TruTV at 9:10 p.m. against San Diego State. And West Virginia players, Indiana players, and other players who felt their team should have been selected, can only watch the games on TV,

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